The lesser known method of birth control

A thought to take with you during your exciting weekends:

A  sex survey in the U.K has found that more than one in 10 people do not realise that a woman can get pregnant if she has sex standing up.

Bugger the Pill, condoms, IUD etc … these brainiacs have gravity on their side. Sadly, they are most likely to breed and breed and breed some more.

Bon weekend!!!

 

 

Iced WHAT biscuit?

I am sure most  South Africans who were kids in  the 80s would immediately recognise Iced Zoo  Biscuits (unless their parents insisted that they  consume no refined sugar and gave them  carrots instead).

As I began eating my way through a packet of  them last night, it became more and more  difficult to accurately identify the ‘animal’ iced  onto the surfact of the biscuit, and less and less  likely that they were, in fact, animals.

See, for example, exhibit A to the left.

Have you studied it?

Good.

Now what the hell is it?

Blobby the blob-like…whale? swan? Macaque monkey?

Did the machine responsible for squishing the icing through an undefined animal-shaped mold go haywire?

Best suggestion wins this biscuit – I’ll post it to you before it goes off or I eat it.

Baaad jokes

A lovely person I know is feeling down today, and because I know how much he loves [or hates? can't quite remember;-)]lame jokes, I’ve included a few here:

A duck walks into a pharmacy and says, “Give me some chapstick and put it on my bill.”

(Actually, I know the above is one Blue Dachshund will like)

Q: What do you call a pig with three eyes?

A: a piiig

Did you hear that a boat carrying red paint and a boat carrying blue paint crashed into each other? Apparently the crew were marooned.

A policeman stopped a man who was walking along with an alligator and ordered him to take it to the zoo at once. The next day the policeman saw the same man with the same alligator.

“I thought I told you to take that to the zoo,” he said.

“I did,” said the man, “and now I’m taking him to the movies .”

Yesterday after work I ran into a colleague as I was walking out of a liquor shop with two bottles of wine tucked under my arms. I fear I looked completely disheveled as I made a joke about just stocking up for my nightly binge. She didn’t laugh, I don’t think.

In other news, some of the fecking dickheads at my  company have decided to place the hard canopy that belongs on the company’s delivery vehicle in one of the very few undercover parking spaces we have at our disposal. Upon spotting this morning that the last open space was occupied by the bloody canopy, I decided to park there anyway, leaving the entire front portion of my car sticking out. I’ve been told now that the offending bit of bakkie has been removed, and that I can now move my car further back in the parking space, thereby allowing others to be able to leave.

oh dear, I can’t seem to find my car keys.

Bother.

The hell of the bachelorette party

At some point early on Saturday evening, I found myself wearing headgear comprising padded fabric stars on stalks attached to a furry Alice band, whereupon I realised that I really do hate bachelorette events as much as I’ve been telling anyone who will listen.

I deliberately arrived at this event over an hour late in the vain hope that the ‘fun and games’ component of the event would have been dispensed with by the time I took my grumpy seat.

Not so.

In fact, I arrived just in time to watch my erstwhile friend now acquaintance extract a bottle of lubricant from a package while the giver of the present announced gleefully that it doubled as massage oil….all as the bride-to-be’s mother sat right next to her daughter and was subject to the ins and outs (har har) of her daughter’s sex life.

Sigh.

Why is this necessary? As the colourful canine remarked, “Why does our society force us to suffer these excruciating pseudo-intimate horror fests with other women?”

Part of the problem with the hen’s party/kitchen tea/bachelorette/pamper party (call it what you will) is the guest list. With few exceptions, the average party comprises one or more of the following types of woman:

• The mother of the bride, who is so fucking pleased her daughter is finally getting married because it means she now has something to brag about to her friends.
• The older woman coerced into attending, either married or unmarried, who cannot hear the shrieking of ‘peppermint-flavoured luuuuuuuuuube!!!” and requests the younger person sitting next to her/them (in this case, me) to repeat what was said.
• The best friend, who has a serious partner and secretly wishes it was she dressed in angel wings, lace gloves and a flashing button that reads ‘Bride to be’, whose role it is to encourage the bride to DRINK!!!
• The bitter ‘friend’ who passes snarky, snotty comments thinly disguised as attempts at humour, whose desperation for a conventional life (hubby and children by 30) becomes more evident with every bottle of lubricant unwrapped.
• The young married woman (with or sans babies) who feels either gloating contentment at being ‘above this’ by virtue of her already having achieved this vital milestone in a woman’s life, or envy at the attention now lavished on another ‘deserving’ woman.
• One (or more) women who genuinely would rather watch six straight hours of parliamentary proceedings that be subject to this ‘celebration’ of the conventional feminine norm by wearing silly hats and talking about what sex is like/will be like between the bride and husband-to-be.

The remainder of the problem is the persistent belief that these inane events somehow are a rite of passage for a bride, without which she is not a ‘real’ woman or ‘real’ wife in the eyes of the world. I cannot be asked to be so happy for this woman that I’m willing to overlook the utter bullshit that surrounds the bulk of conventional western weddings. It’s not for me to be happy – it’s for her to be sure she loves the man she’s chosen and to be with him for reasons other than it being the done thing when a woman reaches a certain age.

I cannot attend another of these. I would surely die (or kill myself).

Drink, drive and avoid

My colleague sent me an email that appears to have originated with the assistant brand manager of a make of beer at South African Breweries (SAB). The person’s name, designation and contact details are included in the email, which I assume was destined for a few internal people at the company. It has, however, made it to friends, family and others who clearly do not work for SAB.

The email reads as follows:

ROAD BLOCKS 13 NOVEMBER 2009 – Please tell everyone you know to stay out the Fourways Area tonight….(Friday 13 November) Areas: Cornerhouse pub, William Nicol, Main Road – Baron…….Witkoppen- right up to Sunninghill…..they are going huge tonight with the drinking and driving.

It will be with the SAB testing station so if caught, they will take blood immediately.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Assistant Brand Manager: XXXXXX brand of beer

The South African Breweries Limited
Tel:              +27 555 5555
Fax:             +27 55 555 5555
Mobile:          +27 (55) 555 5555
Email:           XXXXXXXXX@za.sabmiller.com

DRINK & DRIVE AND YOU WILL GET CAUGHT.
A reality check from SAB

The take-home message from this correspondence is that, at all costs, one should seek to avoid police road blocks rather than, say, drinking within the legal drink-driving limit or even using a designated driver. We learn, too, that a beer manufacturing employee may gladly ignore the message at the bottom of his email signature which subtly warns people of the world of pain and suffering they might suffer upon being caught drinking and driving.

I do hope all 800-odd Facebook friends of this individual received the responsible message he sent out, including some management at SAB who I hope don’t believe the drunk-driving problem in South Africa has absolutely nothing to do with messages like these.

Adding fire to your work performance

Last night my friend H hosted a few of us for dinner at her gorgeous new place. Upon discovering that the chicken she’d purchased from Woolworths for the occasion was disgustingly rotten and sulphurous, she ordered Nando’s and all was right with the world (apart from the mouldering, raw fowl now lining her kitchen’s rubbish bin).

As we munched on our chicken etc., Maggot announced that she would be raising her per-hour work rate after establishing that a fire dancer she knows charges more per hour than she does. The privilege of watching this unkempt, unhygienic, stoned man twirl fire poi (albeit artistically, I’m sure) is more expensive that the hourly research rate of an individual who is reading for a PhD.

There is really only one answer, the four of us decided: Maggot is going to have to incorporate a fire poi act into her feedback sessions with clients. Henceforth, presentations on the results of her research will include the standard feedback component during which Maggot will inform on the current status of the situation and what can be done to alleviate it, after which a fire dancing module will follow.

During the fire dancing module, Maggot will drop her notes/shut down the PowerPoint presentation, hop on the nearest desk, light up some paraffin-soaked material attached to chains, swing them around at random while attempting not to damage furniture/clients, and conclude by setting fire to her own very curly hair.

We all thought this was a winning idea.

I’d certainly pay her fee.

She may, however, have to invest in a few wigs.

Later, as H heated up the Woolworth’s apple pie (not rotten, not sulphurous), I discovered the latest in oven glove-ware…the silicone oven mitt.

This just looks rude to me.

Fortunately I did manage to  capture

H’s Finger of God ^TM move for  your

viewing pleasure.

Vanity Thy Name is Matthew Maynard

Matthew Maynard may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he’s a man who knows what side is his best in photographs, apparently:

Man provides photo for his own wanted poster

LONDON (Reuters) – A British man on the run from police sent a picture of himself to his local paper because he disliked the mugshot they had printed of him as part of a public appeal to track him down.

South Wales Police had issued media with the photo of Matthew Maynard, wanted by officers investigating a house burglary, as part of a crackdown on crime in Swansea.

When it appeared in the South Wales Evening Post, the 23-year-old sent the newspaper a replacement photo of himself standing in front of a police van. They obligingly printed it on the front page.

The police thanked him for helping them in their appeal, saying: “Everyone in Swansea will know what he looks like now.”

I like that he chose to submit a photograph of him standing in front of a police van.

You’d think it’s mustard.

Oi vey.

Dunno about you but trying out pseudo-mustard is about as appealing as doing Bikram yoga in the Sahara desert.

Then again, I eat pseudo-food at times and even verge on thinking it might be food – case in point is Steers.

Your average groceries list

Last weekend, as I kept my friend Maggot company in her kitchen as she brewed some tea for me, I cast an eye or two over her mini-white board on which she writes her groceries list.

Anyone who’s ever compiled a groceries list will acknowledge that there are certain items one would expect to find on such a list, for example:

• Milk
• Sugar
• Fruit
• Tuna
• Cereal

Other items may find their way to the list, or might be stored in one’s brain in order not to raise the interest of people who may happen upon the list, such as:

• Condoms
• Tampons
• Sanitary pads (with wings)
• KY Jelly
• Viagra

Then, dear readers, there’s the list I found in Maggot’s kitchen, which reads as follows (see Figure 1 below):

Figure 1 – Maggot’s groceries list

Shall we review?

Let’s!

• Decaf tea (hmmm, not unusual, probably a good idea for that evening beverage before bedtime.)

• Barley (we-ell, ok then, I guess barley is used in soup or whatever)

• Canderal (I’m with you, a necessary evil.)

• Canned potatoes (potatoes come in cans? Should we be eating potatoes that are available in cans?)

• New stove (ah yes, a standard on a grocery list, usually placed just below ‘milk’. If one can’t find a new stove, move on to the next item on the list – sugar)

• Space curtains (again, an item easily available at your local Pick ‘n Pay, don’t accept anything other than curtains sporting moons and asteroids and comets and planets embroidered with love and care upon them.)

• Time switch for geyser (sorry, I’m stick stuck on the space curtains.)

So as you see, Maggot’s grocery list is rather complex, as well as sparse.

At least I knew I was getting decaf tea.

Mirror, mirror on the wall…

I imagine that we were all wondering, to a greater or lesser degree, about when Joost van der Westhuizen would finally confess to starring in the infamous sex video featuring him apparently receiving oral sex and sniffing CAT.

After months and months of denial, that day came today when the former Springbok rugby captain announced that it *was*, in fact, him.

Let us not all faint at once from non-astonishment.

It should come as no surprise that Joost made this confession now, just ahead of the release of his book ‘Spieelbeeld’ (directly translated as ‘mirror image’, according to Hyphenator – the English version of the book is called ‘Joost: The Man in the Mirror’), in which (Rapport newspaper alleges) Joost relates the anguish he experienced after the story was made public, complements of Heat magazine.

Rapport quotes him as saying, “The fact that I was living a lie was eating me up inside.

One can be certain that hundreds more copies of his book will be purchased now that people know they’ll be getting a version of the truth that we all knew, anyway. An extremely sneaky ploy – perhaps Joost is trying to get all the cash he can should his wife decide to divorce him.

The bit in the Rapport story that made me snort was Joost’s decision to visit local evangelist ‘uncle Angus’ Buchan in June, with his wife Amor and their children, to ask for advice. “Uncle Angus made me realise that I must stand up and be a pillar for my family,” the ex-rugby star said.

It’s unclear what this holy directive meant to Joost, though. Perhaps it meant publicly lying to his wife for a further one to two months until August, or blaming dark forces around him while threatening to sue various magazine editors and the like for fabricating this story.

Perhaps, too, it meant remaining in cahoots with ex-bouncer and current private investigator – and current liar – Mike Bolhuis. When the story first broke, Bolhuis said Joost had passed a polygraph test “with flying colours”.

Then, in March this year, when Joost decided to drop extortion and defamation charges regarding the video, as well as civil action against Heat and Rapport, Bolhuis the lackey said a number of factors had led to the decision to advise his client against taking action: “…(on) reflection we realise that such claims, given South Africa’s weak judicial system, could be stretched out for a long time. Every time something happens in court, the media reports on it, and the whole unsavoury incident is dredged up again. “

Ah yes, that pesky “we’re lying and going to be found out if we go to court” rationale.

So Joost was unfaithful. Who gives a fig?

Why he decided to turn it into such a palaver once he was found out, is what sticks in my throat. Who is going to trust him again?